HomeAwayReviews 1,748

Horrible customer service if you're a guest and you have a problem. They apparently give no latitude to their customer service reps to resolve unique issues, they just say "sorry, that's our policy". In other words, "sorry, you're screwed". Host didn't respond to any written or phone attempts by me and two HomeAway reps to reach them over the course of three days the week of my travels in order to confirm reservation and get address and check-in instructions for a home I had already paid for in France (traveling from California to Normandy on busiest weekend in probably 10+ years 75th anniversary of D-day)... so had to secure alternative housing on my own so I wouldn't be stuck waiting for HomeAway to find me two horrible hotel rooms on a Friday night during historic celebration in small town. Their policy is "show up, and if there is no one there to let you in, then we'll find you two hotel rooms". Yeah, like that would work under these circumstances (hotel occupancy rates at 95%+ for that weekend). Not to mention I didn't have a proper address to show up to. Host eventually confirmed availability of property about two hours after I booked alternative, non-refundable housing ("you can check in at 5:30 PM on Friday")... this email less than 48 hours before I was supposed to check in. HomeAway says they won't reimburse me for any duplicate costs incurred. Didn't even refund service charge for a property I never got the chance to use. Stick with Airbnb.

I booked a property 7 months ago. Two weeks just before the arrival date, the owner informed me to pay an extra amount 11% to cover the tax upon the arrival. I am upset, and the owner cancelled the booking without discussion with me. And I need to find another place to replace it in such a short time especially in peak season. So, no protection for the booking, and it is the first time and the last time I use HomeAway to book a property.

WARNING! Do not ever book a home rental through home away. They do not monitor the homes and in May we booked a home in Las Vegas and after getting there was horrified at what we found. The pool had black mold in it along with brown grime all around and floating stuff mascara is on pillowcases rotten food in the refrigerator dust everywhere and home away does not care so we were out $1400. The pool had black mold in it along with brown grime all around and floating stuff mascaras on pillowcases rotten food in the refrigerator dust everywhere and Homeaway does not care so we were out $1400. We then had to go find someplace else and spend over $1000 for our stay so we're actually out $2400. Our credit card would not it S dispute the charges as home always policy says that you have to cancel three days prior to arrival but how do you know what you're going to find when you get to the house because the picture of this house on the website showed a beautiful clean home which was not the case at all our credit card would not let us dispute the charges as home always policy says that you have to cancel three days prior to arrival but how do you know what you're going to find when you get to the house because the picture of this house on the website showed a beautiful clean home which was not the case at all... we will never ever ever use HomeAway ever again.

This property is grossly misrepresented in your advert. It is advertised as being wheelchair accessible. It is not. On arrival two steps need to be addressed to enter the property, to get to the villa another flight of steps or manoeuvre your wheelchair air up a grassy bank. Once in the villa there are two steps down into the toilet, which is very small with no room for a wheelchair anyway. The ground floor bedroom is the converted garage down by the gate. The villa is advertised as being 5bedrooms, which technically it has, but in reality this is a 3 bedroom villa with a family room, as the 5th bedroom is a child's room accessed through the main bedroom in the converted garage and sharing a shower room also accessed from main bedroom. Totally unsuitable for a family of all adults (ages 79 to 31)with one disabled.

I will never do business with Home Away again.
I booked a place online through them, The Starlight Private Resort in Joshua Tree, CA,
And immediately got an email with a google link address to the house I booked. I clicked the link and realized the property had a different name then I booked, the Calmada Boutique Hotel, with the same address.
Long story short, the owner of the house has a tremendous history of screwing people who rented his property out of their deposit between $500-1000! There was close to 20 horrible reviews online about the man who owned this property taking money from people, watching people with security cameras, and just screwing people over. This man even used to have an old account with Home away and reopened a new one naming his new property the Starlight Private Resort (which is what I booked). There are bad better business bureau reviews about him as well.
I immediately called HomeAway and told them I did not feel comfortable renting from this man and they did nothing to help me. I told them I didn't want to rent from someone who has a history of screwing people for deposits and as a woman I wasn't comfortable being watched by security cameras all over the property. (I learned this from his reviews online).
They asked the owner if my money could be refunded, he said no, because he's a scam artist. Keep in mind this is 30 minutes after I booked the home! HomeAway did nothing to protect me as a renter and did not care that I was not comfortable renting from this man.
Thank god I payed through AMX and disputed it and AMX refunded my money. If it wasn't for them I would be screwed for close to $4000!
Also, getting someone to talk to me about this was close to impossible. I have spent countless hours on the phone with HomeAway asking for supervisors and nobody would help me.
Don't ever do business with the Starlight Private Resort (formerly known as the Calmada Boutique Hotel) or Home Away.
They don't care about their customers, customer service, or if you are getting scammed from someone.

Stay away if you don't want to lose your money!
You pay a large deposit months before you intend to travel and it's up to the property owner if they will pay it back to you. In our case property owner claimed some damage (scratch on the wall) which has been there before we moved in (in fact there were lots of scratches on walls and the property was in need of refurbishment).
Customer service is not helpful at all. I have complained about a lot of things (like constantly disappearing electricity) and asked for compensation, but they didn't want to hear it. They said it's up to the owner who didn't want to hear either.
Basically the property owner can do some work to their property and make you pay for it by not giving the deposit back.
Home Away just take a large fee from you and if you've got a problem they wash their hands of.

I manage a timeshare resort and have had numerous issues for the past 3 years with people trespassing from a townhome across the street. I have even called the police on a few since we are private property with several signs posted. Last week, I noticed a family using our sports court that had walked from across the street. I asked them if they were staying here and they replied, "No, we are staying across the street". I began to tell them that they were trespassing and they then showed me a posting on Home Away and Evolve. It was of the townhome that they rented, but had pictures of our facility and stated that they had full use of our BBQs, Pools, Tennis Court, Sports Court, Putting Green and Playground. Obviously, I was not happy. They provided me with the owner's name and number that they rented from. I called the owner and he acted like he cared and said that he would have it removed that evening. I called Home Away and they assured me that they would work on it immediately and get back with me. Two days later, the ad was still the same and I had not heard from anyone. I called back the owner and he was not nice at all and said that he would take care of it and hung up on me. I called Home Away again and got a salesman named Rob Heise. Rob assured me that he would take care of it and update me before the end of the day or have his supervisor call me. I never heard from anyone. Now it is two days later. I just checked the website and the picture of our pool has been removed, but all other pictures of the property remain along with the language stating that they have full use of the property. Just know that Home Away obviously does not check out the facts of the properties that they list. An owner can put anything they want on their listing. Do your homework first to make sure that the owner HAS rights to the amenities because property managers like myself have no choice but the call the police on people that trespass and I don't want that to be you!

VRBO used to be an excellent almost a bit exclusive rental site. Owners and guests felt safe. Since the take over by Homaway it has become in a cruel money making machine at the cost of the owners and guests lacking any customer service and providing no assistance just trying to steel your money.

They allow reservations without any verification system giving free access to fraudulent use of credit cards. As they have outsourced the payment process to Yapstone they even decline any responsibility. In fact their payment system, instead of giving you security becomes an absolute flaw for which they in addition charge a high fee. You can't verify the customers credit cards as they collect the money for you. Only upon check in you can find out if the guests ID doesn't match the name of the credit card. So you potentially loose the reservation and with it the revenue including the cancellation fee.

In a recent case the scenario got worse. As we always take a maximum of precaution upon check we realized that the guests name didn't match the name of the credit card ( which we can't verify to begin with, as handled by Homaway/ Yapstone). We informed Homaway/ Yapstone right away. The companies customer representative informed us that people might use different names and that we should let the customer stay in the apartment!
Not only was the apartment destroyed at check out, Homaway/ Yapstone the moment the credit card owner claimed the charge back procedure, is claiming the money back for the stay! Then you have to speak with customer representatives one day in Africa and the next in the Philippines having no clue what was discussed last time. A shame.
A business model sure soon will leave this company dead.
Thanks good there are enough competitors.

I have a vacation rental property that I started renting out starting in 2011. Initially, I paid $349/yr subscription to list my property and everything worked out well. Around 2013, they changed their payment processing policy to start collecting a fee on top of the subscription cost, so I decided to cancel the annual subscription and incur a higher fee. (ie instead of x%, I was now paying X+20%). I wasn't happy about the exorbitant fees to both the host and the guest, but I was willing to play along and see if the business model would stand up to the competition. Just recently, they outsourced their payment processing to Yapstone and discovered two things. First, the two business units, Homeaway and Yaotstone, are not fully integrated. I discovered this when the payment processing had no idea of the series of events that occurred with the booking website. Here is a real example, a guest cancels, they refund the guest by taking funds out of my checking account. At the same time, the guest cancels their credit card, there is a chargeback and they again withdraw the funds from my account the second time. It would be great if they rectified the issue over the phone, but instead need 14-45 days to investigate and in the mean time, the dates are blocked out. Secondly, they will charge you for a payment processing that fails due to the chargeback. Why am I paying a high fee for Homeaway to do the billing transaction and still be charged a penalty fee for that service when they run into issues? By the way, without paying for subscription, Homeaway requires all financial transaction to occur through them. Since there is a security deposit and and actual rent, they consider that two chargebacks and double the penalty. At the end, you end up losing money instead of making money.
Property delisted...

Booked a 4 bedroom villa in El Medano and I was sent an e-mail from homeaway advising me that the property had been taken off the website due to some kind of irregularities with ths property owner. They advised me that the booking was cancelled and told me to book somewhere else which I promptly did. They advised me that I would get a full refund of which I had already paid if i sent in the correct paperwork for the monies I had paid. However they only gave me back the fees that they charge and not the full deposit that I paid leaving me around £230 out of pocket. I think that its a disgrace that I have been left out of pocket through no fault of my own and now I dont know what or where to go from here. Any advice would be appreciated.

Whish I read these reviews myself before I payed $500 to use Homeaway for renting out my unit. I just got off of the phone with them with several issues I'm too angry to get into. At least they answer the phone. But they are of no help at all! I have an oceanfront unit with a solid rental history. I had to cancel someone's booking because they booked a Wednesday to a Wednesday when I can only book Sat-Sat. They helped me set this up that way when i joined the site. But someone was still able to instant book it. Homeaway doesn't know how! And now this negatively affects my listing and buries my property down the list! I asked for my $500 back but they said too late even though I haven't hosted a rental yet. I have only 2 weeks booked through them going into the summer. I put my property up on Airbnb and things started booking right up. Just praying they don't take over that company too.

It won't surprise me when I see a class action lawsuit filed against this company. It has resulted in countless losses to renters and is set up to generate its revenue through support of the owners, many of which are immoral. I lost half of my payment when the owner cancelled on me 2 weeks before arrival because that's what the cancellation policy stated. So I lost money becuase they wanted to cancel. And to leave a review? You have to be invited. So any negative reviews are withheld from most posted property advertisements. I wouldn't recommend this site to anyone, STAY AWAY.

I/m getting charged for Homeaways mistake. All i wanted is to offer an additional discount to my guests. All other platforms enable easy changes. Customer service agent led me through the process on Livechat (and left a paper trail). I followed his instructions to the letter.
I ended up being charged twice (for the initial quote and again for the new quote).
Tried to fix the issue. Chat line broke. The next few days no-one would answer my chat attempts- At least 10 attempts. "you are now chatting live with an agent"... "Agent shut down this chat."
Finally, I was able to get an agent on the phone.
Yes, I see. You are correct, but there is nothing we can do!?
Unacceptable! Unprofessional!

Their systems mean that you have no way of telling what you will actually pay. Our initial quote for rental was 3572 for 2 weeks and when we came to pay this had gone up to 4078 and this was their service charge, We said no way property wasn't worth that and wouldn't have booked if we had known beforehand, I called them up 7 times to get the refund of their service fee which they took. Each time I was told in your account this evening and no funds. Eventually I sent solicitors letter and they finally paid. They never do anything they say they will and absolutely never contact customers when they have to refund. Terrible business model and the property owners are even more vociferous! Do not touch them with a bargepole!

I booked a villa through HomeAway having found it on their website, I requested the dates as required and was told they were available, I was then sent the booking confirmation and payment details, I paid in full again as requested.
I emailed to ask when details would be given but got no reply, after a week I contacted the customer service number to be told this booking was not with then and their website must have been hacked.
They do not want to know and even put the phone down on me!

FALSE ADVERTISED HOME WHICH CHARGE A BOND, WHAT A JOKE THEN HOME AWAY DON'D FOLLOW UP AND RESPOND!
I BOOKED AND PAID IN FULL THEN THE SUPPOSEDLY OWNER WHICH IS A REAL ESTATE AGENT THEN SENDS YOU AN EMAIL TO GIVE CREDIT CARD DETAILS TO PAY A $1000 BOND. I HAVE USED THIS SITE SINCE IT WAS STAYZ AND HAVE NEVER PAID A BOND. WHEN YOU CONTACT HOMEAWAY THEY ACT LIKE THEY CARE ASKING FOR MORE INFORMATION THEN DO NOT REPLY! WHAT A JOKE! I WAS CHARGED A 50% CANCELATION FEE CAUSE OF THIS RUDE AND WRONGLY ADVERTISED PROPERLY AND STILL WAITING FOR HOMEAWAY TO GET BACK TO TWO WEEKS LATER. I WILL NEVER USE THIS SITE AGAIN AND WILL TELL ALL MY FAMILY, FRIENDS AND COLLEAGUES TO USE AIRBNB INSTEAD!